‘We’re Not Afraid of Boots on the Ground’: Trump Suggests US Troops May Be Deployed to Ensure Venezuela is ‘Run Properly’

President Donald Trump did not discount the idea of keeping U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela as the U.S. ushers in regime change.

Trump held a press conference from Mar-a-Lago Saturday to update the American people about the overnight attack on Caracas and abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, who are on their way to New York to stand trial on drug charges.

Trump said the U.S. will be “running the country” until he chooses a successor to Maduro, prompting one reporter to ask if that meant U.S. troops would remain on the ground.

“They always say, ‘boots on the ground.’ We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Trump said.

He continued:

We had boots on the ground last night and very high level, actually. We’re not afraid of it. We don’t mind saying it, but we’re going to make sure that that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain. This is a very dangerous attack, this is an attack that could have gotten very, very badly, could have gone very badly and we could have lost a lot of people last night, could have lost a lot of dignity, lost a lot of equipment. The equipment is less important, but, we could have lost a lot and we’re going to make sure that this is proper.

We’re there now, we’re ready to go again if we have to, we’re going to run the country right, it’s going to be run very judiciously, very fairly and it’s going to make a lot of money and we’re going to give money to the people reimburse people that were taken advantage of. We are going to take care of everybody. It’s very important. We couldn’t let them get away with it.

Trump added, “You know, they stole our oil. We built that whole industry there and they just took it over like we were nothing and we had a president that decided not to do anything about it. So we did something about it. We’re late, but we did something about it.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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